


This Fire That Falls From A Verglas Sky

by ACakeEater



Series: Fire!Verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bobby - Freeform, Conflict, Dark Side of the Moon, Drama, Intense Fighting, M/M, S5E16, Season 2, Time Travel (Not exactly), Violence, Wincest - Freeform, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-16 23:53:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1366357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ACakeEater/pseuds/ACakeEater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And so it was written that the chosen if be halves  and the word of the Lord befalls, than it shall end as one as it had begun in pieces, for only then will it alter that which awaits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter I

**Author's Note:**

> I found it stored somewhere in my PC and thought- what the hell?!?
> 
> This can get really confusing, at least that's what my sister said but I didn't edit it for some reason. So if you have any trouble understanding anything let me know.

It began without so much as a sound. _  
_

 

~~

 

 

 “Where’s Mom?”

Sam’s four, it’s raining and Fitchburg’s miles behind them.

John doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.

He’d said enough in this life.

And so he just drives on, eyes on the road and a bitter tang on his tongue.

He tastes blood.

“She lives in the sky, Sam. Eat your pretzels.”

Dean answers. As though he had known it all along.

John can’t tell for sure.

 

 

~~

 

 

_We’re brothers, family, no matter how bad it gets- that doesn’t change._

“You walk out that door, don’t you ever come back.”

_I would die for him in a second, but I won't let him do this to himself. I can't. I guess I found my line. I won't let my brother turn into a monster_

 “I'm done trying to save you. You're a monster, Sam -- a vampire. You're not you anymore. And there's no going back.”

_“_ _I’ll take the pain and the guilt, I’ll even take Sam as is.”_

“I just don't think I can trust you.”

 

 

You’re a monster.

 

 

~~

 

 

Two names. Two tattered halves of one lost soul.

Pathetic, really.

“Zachariah, you called.”

He did? Really, he had no idea. (Ah, the realms of sarcasm.)

Chamuel stands rigid by the door; it’s funny how professional it all seems, this delusion picked up from the infinite minds of mankind. Nonetheless, Zachariah’s fond of this, having an office of his own where business can be discussed confidentially. He prefers it to the sharp, indistinct link that wired them to each other in heaven; something that had always lacked in a way he could never pinpoint.

Some of his brothers didn’t understand his detachment. He never bothered with them though; they were his inferiors anyway. The world was curious place if not a tricky one. If handled right, it could be worth every single minute of the time they had left before the final fall.

“What do you think of our handy work? You have been sticking around long enough to get a whiff of it all, I believe.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.” Oh Chamuel, that clever little ape-lover.

“Oh, I think you do.”

“In that case, I assuming you called me here to chat about the apocalypse.”

Zachariah lets out a chuckle, humorless and dark,briskly folding his hands behind him and walking around his desk to lean on the front edge as he regards the angel before him. His eyes access the handsome vessel of his brother, taking in the youth and the glow of a serene demeanor and as fabricated as that was, it seems peaceful at the moment. But unlike the one standing across from him, he doesn’t wonder about the human affixed inside the other.

Chamuel had not taken a single step from where he stood.

“That and so much more. Take a seat, why don’t you?”

“I’d rather stay where I am, thank you.” That animosity never ceases to amuse him.

Zachariah snorts. He should have been expecting something like that. Sometimes he didn’t know why he even bothered. “It’s about the Winchesters. The future’s looking bleak again.”

Chamuel tenses and he smiles. Bull’s eye.

“You can’t stop the inevitable, brother.” The words spew uncertainty.

“Oh, you know we can. It’ll be difficult, yes but we have dealt with fate before and let’s admit it, that’s not our biggest headache. We’ll simply kill her if she doesn’t obey. And this time it’s not even going to be something for which we’ll have to worry our pretty little heads. The Winchester brothers _will_ be driven apart and the other option _will_ disappear. There is no alternative. It _will_ happen.”

There’s silence for a diminutive moment, abrupt and hefty. Zachariah sees him straighten more, traces the hard jaw and the crease on his forehead, all the while feeling nothing for the brother that he had never understood. Why this was challenging for him, he would perhaps never know.

“And why is that?”

The voice is blank to his disappointment. But he relents, simpering defiantly at the victory that had been his before they had even started this dialogue.

“Because you will be lending us a hand, brother.”

 

 

~~

 

 

Their heaven was empty, mostly anyway. John Winchester’s floated among too many commoners but it, as they all did, remained blissful. That is, without its occupant. That alone robbed it of every color that may have one day brightened it.

Mary’s was white and there was not much to tell in her case. She was absent in hers as well, rather puzzlingly since she wasn’t in hell either. Castiel never found their fragments of paradise intriguing, neither before he met Dean nor after.

Now, they call him, beckoning him over as though to hear secrets that feel thrilling as much as they are forbidden. The Winchesters have always made him wonder, muse about everything that could trigger doubt and hesitation in his instincts.

Although he had never let that sink too deep inside, it had always made him keep his distance. Now it was too strong to overpower but the disappointment of the barrenness he found there was irksome.

Still, he does not relent.

He flits through the Elysium of the Winchester brothers instead, quickly and snappily, drawing it in and soaring high above it. There’s only one. The waves freeze now and then, often halting as if the time had lost its momentum and he simply takes in whatever it offers, regardless of the small pictures and hazed flashes that does no good in satisfying the questions he knows he can never voice out loud.

They were not enough.

They were nothing but happiness, what was always meant to be in heaven. Nevertheless, to Castiel it appears vaguely guarded and he momentarily entertains himself with the thought of his home losing a significant part to one of its children. But that, as far as he was concerned, is impossible.

They were rare, less in number and scattered with intergalactic spaces between them. Some, who died before meeting their destined one found the other piece here while others who had held hands throughout their whole journey on earth lost themselves after death. It is no tragedy for it has all been written. But it still stimulates a rebellious side of him that he had never known. And as each hour passed, he finds it harder to fight it back within him.

Dean and Sam were somewhat unfortunate, sadly. And as their friend, Castiel thinks of himself as a failure, unable to deter the future and meanwhile having nothing to compensate for it. Something that had always resembled hope for his father’s creations now appears to him worse than disgraceful and fouler than the darkest hours in perdition. Love had never meant so little to him before. And it was a pity how ruthless it feels now.

Castiel decides to pay a visit to Death as soon as that thought leaves him.

 

 

~~

 

 

Death evades Castiel as though he’s nothing less than the plague.

Granted, he has no particular reason for it but he had always thought that desperation never suited an angel and Death simply loathes it. Moreover, Castiel’s newfound friendship with Dean Winchester reeks of no coincidence behind this game of tag Death can’t help but play. He half believes the Winchesters has nothing to do with it and their angel is being an idiot thanks to them rubbing off on him but the theory’s split into 50-50 and he leaves it there, not having any interest to carry on with it any further.

Plus he thinks it would be delightful if fate succeeds in her plan.

He finds it amusing so far.

 

 

~~

 

 

The end is nigh.

Prayers heal and words mean more now; yet she finds no faith in them. That itself speaks volumes. And it speaks without a voice. There’s no light. And the fire she had once known shines alone before her and it breaks her heart how no one sees it. She is proud and left abandoned in the dark. She doesn’t see what she had wanted to or what she had to suffer through these past years; she doesn’t see what others do.

Something has changed.

She could feel the fire and the terror, his rage, his brother’s pain and all that was left of them- all at once.

And she wonders for a fleeting second if John had ever known.

 

 

~~

 

 

It begins when they are together and nothing else matters. There’s no hints, no warning or caution as they obsess their way to each other no matter what comes between them, keep finding their way back and now, if little thought is put in it, it would seem so much clearer and so much darker, colder even.

It was not their fault. And then it was. Hate, anger and agony had, by then, fallen for them both and they had succumbed to the strength that solitude offered, drawn in by the hardness and the brutality, everything that had never been there before; at-least not with the other beside him.

When it had begun, it was too late.

 

 

_You know, I tried so hard to keep you safe._

_I know._


	2. Chapter II

He blinks his eyes open and finds himself somewhere else;  somewhere that feels a little like home but nowhere near close.

Sam’s with him.

“We've already lost dad. We've lost mom. I've lost Jessica. And now I'm gonna lose you, too?”

Dean takes a step back, something he hadn’t done before he knows and that ices him awake inside. He should be looking around now, taking in the familiar surroundings and the scene that refuses to dissolve into something else, staying just as he remembers it; yet, it’s wrong and he can’t bring himself to will this away, whatever this is. Wherever this is.

Instead he focuses on Sam, on the innocence he hadn’t seen there back then and the charismatic youth of his twenty three year old not-so-little little brother.

He drinks in the face that every anger in the world is going to take away from him and something freezes him on the spot.

He remembers this and he’s supposed to say something but something’s holding him back. A part of him suspects it’s just him. A part of him seethes.

_You know why I didn't tell you about Ruby, and how we're hunting down Lilith? Because you're too weak to go after her, Dean. You're holding me back. I'm a better hunter than you are. Stronger, smarter. I can take out demons you're too scared to go near._

“You say that like you don’t know that, Sam.”

Where did that come from?

The broken hurt that flashes in front of him feels satisfying and he walks away the second he’s seen it.

They are supposed to be working a case here or maybe it’s done, he can’t remember right. What he does know is that he can’t be here to take a literal trip down memory lane and buy all the good stuff he can get when he remembers everything. Plus this ain’t real, it can’t be.

Maybe nothing ever was and he was just fooling himself all along.

 

 

~~

 

 

It’s different this time and then it’s not.

They’re in the impala with the dying sun’s looming overhead from the thinning horizon. It’s hot though and the windows are rolled down, letting in the wind and the dust as his baby revs along a narrow road, sweeping past half-empty grain fields and mossy tree lines.

The white sky fades to red and gold and the first thing he inexplicably notices right after is that the radio’s off.

He doesn’t remember this.

Sam’s risking glances at him, worrying again no doubt and that’s the only thing he doesn’t find strange.

And that’s also the only thing triggering his temper rather than his cautiousness right now. But this time around it’s for something else entirely, only Sam doesn’t know. Because it hasn’t happened yet. That doesn’t matter, that doesn’t change anything.

Dean can’t forget. He can’t even bring himself to hope.

_See how far we’ve come, Sam?_

The scorn tastes bitter in his mind.

“Dean, you’ve been driving for twelve hours man. Want me to take over?” Sam- considerate and understanding as always. Perfect and charming, all straight A-s and gooey eyes, everyone’s favorite. Dean grimaces; he sounds pathetic even to himself.

“Nope.”

He’s not handing over baby to the traitorous bitch. No way is he betraying his car like that. He’s not Sam.

The road stretches on and on and he wonder momentarily if it even has a beginning for it to end. Sam sits still and quiet for a bunch of frustrating minutes before he repeats himself quietly. Dean straight out ignores him this time.

By the time they stop at another one of those usual annoying motel parking lots, Dean aches everywhere. He finds it easier to overlook; it’s feels as real as nothing at all.

 

 

~~

 

 

Dean sits with Sam’s laptop and doesn’t think. He searches for reasons, considers Zachariah and angels and Lucifer and questions till his brain's fried dry; why he’s here and how, why this is happening when it’s all about to end and why, _why_ it won’t go away- this, this whatever it is.

If Sam has a problem with being away from his precious computer, he doesn’t say anything. Not that it would’ve mattered to Dean. He probably wouldn’t even have listened.

There’s something in him that keeps holding him back, this bitter terrifying hatred and anger at everything and Dean supposes it’s the same one that’s too tired and aimless to wander on this broken road anymore. And maybe _this_ was death. His.

He remembers some moments, moments like when Sam jokes about something unimportant and laughs only to stop suddenly and go silent; as though he thinks it’s wrong.

Or maybe it’s something else, who cares.

There’s small déjà vu-s like when Sam cries quietly on the bed next to him when he thinks Dean’s asleep or when Sam shares all his fries with him without complaining or when they watch a movie together for the first time since Dad’s death and howl till they’re tangled with each other on the floor.

And then there are those where they fight and Dean doesn’t come back for that night, where Sam gets hurt and keeps apologizing over and over again to Dean for everything as his brother patches him back together, where they don’t talk for weeks and it hurts in ways it shouldn’t have.

And there are those times when he can’t remember and it feels like he’s stuck in a dream. Sam notices his sleepless nights and nags, he takes in the sudden silent treatments and stays quiet, he finds bloodstained T-shirts in Dean’s duffel (the ones that has yet to happen as far as he recalls) and brings it up afterwards like it’s something dark and forbidden.

Dean sees fear and worry, he catches hints of desperation and panic, loss and helplessness, hope and love.

Too bad it won’t ever be enough.

 

 

~~

 

 

Dean looks at himself in the mirror, sees nothing worth seeing.

There’s a man, too young and smooth, too spirited yet alert and he knows he should recognize him, had seen this a million years ago it seems and now he’s looking back at a version of himself he can’t relate to anymore.

And it shows. There’s dark circles and transparency and an emptiness that probably scares this Sam like Ruby never has- or well, ever _will_ (and that makes him kinda happy, not that he’s going to acknowledge that).

He doesn’t see anything more than a broken piece of shit beyond what the mirror shows him. Because he knows what he’s seeing now is someone else.

He’ll change too. There’s no escaping that.

 

 

~~

 

 

When Sam finally confronts him, they are at one of those pasty diners and it’s a dark blue evening outside.

It’s not empty around them and the chatter’s buzzing like a squillion bees in the air. It’s annoying and then it’s not. Sam, meanwhile, seems too keen on the idea of having a nice little chick-flick dialogue before their server sways in with their order.

Dean tunes him out, blurs everything else and simply enjoys the tang of meringue lemon pies and coffee till the bitter acidity’s all that’s left hanging from his tongue.

When he leaves Sam at their motel street to drive back to pick up the cute waitress and gets to taste her an hour later, he feels numb and cold and dead. It’s like he’s suddenly become a weight and there’s nothing left to carry him anymore. Only Sam maybe- who’s just a little away to reach out but who reminds him of the darkest shade of hellfire.

She leaves him gasping and trying to find his way back; she leaves him with a hollow that cuts deep and he knows it’s not going anywhere. It’s not a part of him anymore- it _is_ him. And it’s not going anywhere.

 

 

~~

 

 

He’s crying again.

Dean can’t hear him, not exactly but he knows.

He’s on his side, faced away from Sam in the dark and he’s trying to deafen the silence, lessen the vibe it gives off because this leaves him on edge, tense and on the verge of losing it.

He’d at least hit Sam three times this week out of nothing but spite , just because he can, just because he remembers that Sam let him after Dad- let him without complaint or any sign of leaving him.

But that’s not why his little brother’s shaking by himself next to him. Sometimes Dean forgets that he wasn’t the only one who’d just lost a father. And in this case, he’d even had five years to get over it. Or something _close_ to getting over it.

There’s a tender deflation inside him and he rolls over to stare at Sam’s back, seeing through the darkness yet seeing nothing worth looking at.

Sam seems still from a distance but he can make out the slight motions, the little shudders and the strength Sam’s needing to breathe right.

He watches for a second; watches the brother he’d raised and who’d left him, the brother he’d fought his way back to only to be abandoned for a demon- a brother who seems to be at his happiest when he’s away from him.

“Sam.”

Maybe Sam freezes, maybe he’s imagining it; whatever it is, Sam appears to be suddenly too aware of him.

The moment halts and goes quiet and then it dissipates into the void it had been a few seconds ago, with no meaning or anything else behind it. Dean doesn’t close his eyes, fights the urge to blink as he keeps a levelled gaze to the frozen back.

He never gets an answer.

 

 

~~

 

 

“Kill me.” Sam groans out when he spills his soda on his pants ten miles from Louisiana and then hurries to push his laptop to safety and grab a handful of tissue.

He never sees Dean still beside him, misses the eyes that snap to him with terror.

_You have to **watch out**  for me, all right? And if I ever ... turn into something that I'm not ...   
_

_you have to kill me._

 

 

~~

 

 

They fight over Dad for the first time since he died and Dean leaves only to come back the next morning to a different room in the same motel and a nonchalant Sam.

He raises his voice when Sam disregards him and then clocks him in the face, wanting him to hurt because he deserves it, because he shouldn’t have brought Dad up and because something hurts but he can’t pinpoint it; he hits Sam because of it all and so much more- but mostly because he’s half drunk.

Sam doesn’t slug him though, not once and honestly, he’s not surprised.

They don’t talk for days. But Dean knows that Sam keeps staring at him; he has to fight the need to care every time.

 

 

~~

 

 

Dean snaps on an ordinary day when Sam’s taking a shower and there’s nothing but day time television in front of him. He grabs the stupid laptop that Sam has glued himself to since their fight and bangs it up against the wall before letting it thump slothfully on the floor.

He kicks at it, lets it all out, the fury and pain and the helpless feeling of utter loss till there’s pieces of its remnants lying everywhere and his knuckles are bloodstained because he’d hit the wall too hard in the middle of his crazed frenzy.

When Sam steps out, Dean stalks past him and slams the bathroom door shut.

He locks it.

It takes him an hour to find the courage to close the tap and get back in the room. Sam looks up as he stumbles out and pushes his half of their supper towards him with a slim meaningless smile.

Dean doesn’t look at him for a moment, he takes in the clean floor instead, sees the neat motel room instead of the mess they had (he had) made it into and gapes at it like he’s trying to understand something.

“Uh, I threw out the trash. You’re food’s getting cold, c’mon.”

Dean changes and then sits down. They talk as they eat and Sam laughs sometimes at his attempted pitiful jokes and Dean just stares at him; he stares at him with an ache that had never been there before.

 

 

~~

 

 

It’s raining and Sam’s been missing for a while. The last time Dean remembers seeing him is when he shoved him away outside the bar in front of an audience of clingy couples and then left him standing there alone to head back inside.

He’d searched around for some news after Sam’s disappearance, for hints and clues, for something, _anything_.

They’re not supposed to be stuck here in Lewistown, they’re not even supposed to be anywhere _near_ Montana.

But Sam just had to make his bitch face and throw a hissy fit over the fact they were broke and if it wasn’t for the little cunt, Dean wouldn’t have stopped at the rundown bar, wouldn’t even have thought about it. Now it’s too late.

And he’d lost Sam again.

And the continual repetition of a storm approaching the town in the news doesn’t help much either.

 

 

~~

 

 

Hours; everything’s turned upside down in just a couple of hours and now- now it’s hard to fucking breathe.

_“I’ve got everything we need, Dean. C’mon, let’s go.”_

_“…”_

_“You want to stay? Fine, then lend me a hand, man. How about you hustle up some more while I wait here?”_

_“…”_

_“Dean...”_

_“…”_

_“…I think that’s enough Dean. Time to take a break.”_

_“’M fine, not drunk, go away.” He slurs and then hiccups, he feels weird and so far gone he can’t even think straight._

_The music’s too loud, the chicks are smokin’ hot and the bar smells like his second home. Oh god- fuck yeah, he never wants to leave._

_“Dean.”_

_He ignores the warning and the whine in that familiar voice and shakes off the arm that’s trying to pull him away. He catches the eyes of a blond watching him from across the bar and smiles gleefully at her, fully intending to make his way over to her side but his arm’s grabbed and he’s dragged outside before he knows what’s happening._

_He wrestles out of the firm grip when they’re out in the cool night air and glares at his would-be-demon-skank-addict brother with a loathing so black it leaves him trembling. He growls out a threat but Sam cuts in coolly before he can end this._

_“I’m not gonna let you keep doing this Dean, you’ve been constantly living on booze for this past few weeks and I’m worried, okay? Can you lay off it for some time, please?”_

_People are staring at them, pairs torn apart from making out in the shadows and they observe the two brothers like they’re a part of some messed up stand-up comedy but Dean doesn’t care about that; no, he sees the fear on his little brother- bolder than ever before and it has him scoffing out an humorless breath of laughter._

_“Trust me, Sam.” He manages out with a vague blankness that sounds more frightening than he’d intended to. “Don’t tell me what to do. Ever. You’d live to regret it.”_

_He moves to walk away but Sam blocks his path again._

_He pushes, shoves hard with an anger that’s more animalistic than anything and by the time Sam regains his balance, he’s gone._

_~~_

Bobby’s pissed at him but he still calls, feeding him as much info as he can get while buying whatever update he can talk about but Dean can barely stand through the words, his thoughts already a taint of broken  glass. This- this didn’t happen. This never happened.

This can’t be happening.

It’s been two days.

Sam’s phone’s turned off and there’s probably not a tracking device in the world that could locate him now. It’s been two days, it’s been too long and who knows what’s already happened. It’s like he’s lost Sam for good and this one’s on him.

“Dean.”

Bobby’s tone is strangely soft and that scares him. He identifies pity and sympathy and it’s too fucking much. He needs to find Sam, he can’t keep hanging off the edge - no more wasting time.

He hangs up.

 

 

~~

 

 

At some point, he wants to forget it all.

He wants to stop caring like it actually matters. The world’s going to end eventually anyway.

 

 

~~

 

 

He doesn’t think of Sam when he lays awake the next night.

It’s the first time since the beginning of the end and he misses the bitterness and the acidic sense of betrayal, the pain and the emptiness that’s like some constant reminder of his loss.

But-

But he’d rather have that than no Sam by his side.

 

 

~~

 

 

There’s this voice he ignores for the following days, one that keeps nagging him to drop the Bella Swan façade and get going with his instincts to look for Sam; ‘cause that’s his priority, that’s his job and he’s either losing his touch or is completely in over his head with himself.

The voice like, any other reassuring tone, probes at him in a way that’s all too familiar because this has happened too many times already- he’d lost a lot of fights, lost so many loved ones and now, he’s cuddling with the sense of failure like it’s his other half.

And so he does what he does best and runs away instead of listening to that stupid voice that sounds so much like him he doesn’t even want to think about it.

He worries but doesn’t feel anything. There’s panic and a need to keep looking but other than that there’s nothing else and he feels dead. It’s nothing new of course.

If he prays to Castiel now- because he’s up there somewhere, Dean knows that- things would spin out of control and judging by the way the angel had been right after he got Dean out of hell, the Castiel he would be praying to wouldn’t even consider hearing him out.

It’s a fight to damn it all and do it anyway.

In the end it’s just another one of those ideas he’s used to throwing away.

 

 

~~

 

 

Sam. Sam hadn’t said a word.

He had reached out, he had left him his space and he had been the one to take Dean’s shoes off and tuck him in at nights when he’d stumble in late into the night and dropped dead on his bed in his drunken haze.

And Dean had hit him the next day, had gave him blow after blow over and over again because of Dad, because of Ruby and because of everything else that’s gone wrong between them. This Sam doesn’t even know, he hadn’t even changed, this one was his little brother.

 _Was_.

His throat aches suddenly like it’s been scrubbed raw and he curls into himself on the bed, squinting his eyes shut against the heat of the sunlight through the window; this Sam hadn’t done anything. This Sam leaves his enemies a second chance and loves even those who hurt him. Loves Dean.

He binds his eyes tighter together, fights the urge for release and dies a little more inside.

 

 

~~

 

 

Sam’s gone. He remembers when he wakes amidst a blur of hectic vision and misted senses. He doesn’t know how long it’s been, how long Sam’s been gone but it’s easier now to pretend he’d left him again. That he’d walked out.

That he’s not coming because this is the end and he doesn’t want Dean anymore.

It’s so easy to believe.

 

 

~~

 

 

Sam. 

 

 

~~

 

 

Bobby’s been calling a dozen times lately and he’d ignored every one of them. It feels like he hadn’t eaten for days and his body is so heavy and lifeless that he finds himself moving sometimes, just shifting and rolling on the dead beat mattress.

It never ceases to make his head whirl like a vortex and he lets himself drift every time.

He must’ve thrown up in the middle of this madness because this rotten smell of puke had to be coming from him. He closes his eyes, wants to shut down for some time but Bobby’s persistently on his caller ID and he has to press his ears harder on the pillow as he muffles a groan.

He gets up after his cell goes on ringing continually and sweeps past it to head to the bathroom. He needs to piss and fast.

 

 

~~

 

 

He ends up with a long hot shower and a cup of coffee in his hand after half an hour. Bobby seems to have lost the interest on sharing whatever stuff he had in mind since his phone hasn’t even vibrated after he’d come back into the room.

He scours the newspaper, thinks of Sam living his apple pie life somewhere away from the horror stories in front of him and wonders how long it will take to drive all the way to Maine from here.

That’s where the werewolf is if the hints on the headlines are anything to go by and he’s strung up too tight to stay inside this four walled torture chamber anymore. Hell had been better than this.

His cell rings again when he’s almost done packing and he stares at it this time, seeing Bobby’s name and feeling terrified of the sudden desperation that this is clearly portraying.

It takes him a minute to reach out and hear the last voicemail he’d been left.

_Dean, you goddamn idjit! I got Sam here with me-_

That’s all he hears, the rest for him is just a black oblivion.

 

 

~~

 

 

His ears roar and it’s either the wind or a tornado of silence. Bobby stares as he walks closer to the couch in his living room, shrinks the distance between him and his brother with wild, red eyes and Sam’s blinking at him through small orbs; like he’s not getting this, not understanding any of this and how much this means, how much it’s important.

“Sam.”

That’s enough. For now. He doesn’t know what else to say, what’s Sam’s expecting. Maybe an apology or a confession, whatever it is- this would have to do for now.

He reaches out, slowly and watches as his brother gawks at his hand uncomprehendingly and then halts. His breath whooshes out once and dies, as though it had ripped a hole through his lungs and he lets his fingers crook down, lets his hand fall.

He smiles, something bitter and wet, strained and tense. “Good to have you back. Glad you’re okay.”

 

 

~~

 

 

Bobby says he found Sam floating face down in some random abandoned beach, far enough for him to be swept away. _Haunted_? Dean asks after his fourth shot of cheap whiskey and Bobby shrugs, says he’s not sure. Dean doesn’t push him any farther than that. Sam wakes up again after an hour or so, this time with full consciousness.

He smiles at Dean as Bobby hands him a glass of water to clear his throat and Dean presses back further against the doorframe. When Sam sits up straighter, he looks over at him and frowns.

“You’re not hurt, right?”

Dean’s curiosity peaks and he peers at him questioningly, searching for answers and maybe something else. “Uh- I don’t think so. Why’d you ask?”

Sam shakes his head and breathes out a sigh of relief. “No, it’s nothing. Forget it.”

Here they go again.

Dean nods and leaves the room. They hadn’t touched once. And something in him is just screamingthat this isn’t real. That this is all in his head and now he doesn’t know what to think about whatever the hell’s up with this shit. He’s not even supposed to be here.

 

~~

 

 

It’s over midnight and Bobby’s asleep on the couch. Sam’s not; he can see him twitching in Bobby’s bedroom, thanks to the old man leaving the door ajar. Dean paces for most of the night, catches Bobby snoring all light and snuffles but it’s nothing but a tense pressure that he feels from the vibe coming off from the bedroom.

He resists, hesitates afterwards but soon gives in and tows inside, closing the door behind him. Sam flinches and turns to him fast, seeming caged in and uptight, like an animal held prisoner and finally let free.

He blinks once, staring through narrow eyes and then cocks his head to a side “Hey.”

Dean tries to force a smile and fails. “Hey.”

He walks closer as Sam sits up and notes the table lamp that had been left on. He doesn’t ask about it, doesn’t voice any of the questions that’s been killing him since Sam disappeared; he looms over his brother instead for a short moment, his face hollow and his gaze burning through the face directed up at him with a somnolent frown.

“What is it, Dean?”

He observes the dark circles for the first time and can almost feel the scowl take over his face. Sam seems taken back at his sudden silent hostility but he keeps quiet, clever move on his part; Dean’s not in the mood for any fighting, not when Sam just got back.

“I’ll stay here. Sleep.”

Sometimes it feels so easy between them.

 

 

~~

 

 

Sam wakes screaming in the darkest hour of the night, thrashing and clutching empty air with clawing hands. He wheezes in air after air like he’s holding on to a lifeline and then shakes there in the middle of the bed, trying to get back to himself.

Dean’s there in a blink of an eye, towering over him and grabbing hold of the flailing limbs. He’s trying to say something, he’s trying to calm Sam down because that’s all he can think about right now when Sam’s losing it before him but all he’s doing is murmuring nothing at all till it starts to make sense. It takes him a second to realize that he can’t breathe as well.

“Sam?” He croaks out lamely and Sam, who had pacified under his touch, closes his eyes and leans back against his hand at the nape of his neck.

“It’s okay, I'm good.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know, bad dream I guess.”

Dean stares at him hollowly. “That’s not what I meant.” This wasn’t what he wanted, this was taking it- whatever the hell this is- to a whole new level, this was all coming out _wrong_.

“…”

“Sam, look at me.” He sounds hard and he knows this side of him reminds Sam of Dad but now everything-

“Sam, I’m sorry but you can’t just shut me out; this is-” _Out of your control? Out of mine?_

“You can go to sleep now, Dean. I’ll be fine.” Sam’s suddenly distant, the comfort of his brother’s touch now driving him back.

“I’m not leaving till you spit it out.”

“Then I guess we’re stuck here for the time being.”

Sam’s not even looking at him. His face holds defiance and a fierce determination but there’s a familiarity as well. Sam thinks he’s going to hit him, he’s prepared for a fight.

Dean takes in the lightless tunnel in those eyes and something snaps.

Or maybe he finally breaks.

Because in under a minute, he finds himself pinning Sam to the bed and leaning down until they’re inches apart. He glares down at wide eyes with a rage that suddenly burns through his blood like it’s reached its limit.

“Guess so, Sammy.”

 

 

~~

 

 

“The hell, Dean?!? Let go!” Sam struggles under his hands, futile and weak. He still hasn’t got his strength back. Dean narrows his eyes further at the scrunched up frustration beneath him and squeezes his fingers together a little tighter.

“You son of a bitch.”

His voice sounds so far, like it’s someone else who’s whispering; it shakes at the sharpest edge and he recognizes more hurt in it than anger.

Sam stills and blinks up at him.

“Dean?”

“I tried, Sam. I tried so damn hard to save you.”

“Dean-”

“Shut up Sam. I’m done, okay? I’m done with this shit, this life- it’s like I don’t even know it anymore; it’s like I don’t know _you_ anymore.

It was always about keeping you safe, for him; I was supposed to take every bullet for you and I did- _I did_. And I always thought it was my job, that I had no other choice- I _had_ to do it- it was all on me. But Sam- _Sammy_ , I-

Something’s so messed up, so fucked up about us that I don’t even know it yet, don’t know what’s wrong with me or you or this family if it ever was one. All I know is somewhere along the way it was too late and blaming Dad couldn’t fix anything anymore, ‘cause I can’t stop this- this whatever the hell it is between us. Keeping you safe, looking out for you, it’d always been everything that matters and it doesn’t make any sense and it makes me want to hurt you and I hate it so bad, so fucking bad-

I’ve never wanted to hate someone so much and its scary- how bad I wanna get away from you. I want-”

_I want to fucking stop._

He wants to beg, Sam or God or someone else, whoever it is that can help him. Mend him. ‘Cause it’s supposed to hurt but all there is for him is just a bucketful of lies and emptiness and pretense.

Broken cuts too late to be pieced back.

Sam opens his mouth but nothing leaves him, his breath hitches, his eyes shivering with raw horror and Dean loses it. Before he knows what he’s doing he’s swinging down, wanting, just _wanting_ for once- to punch that face out and rip the skin till there’s nothing but blood, to make him scream and cry and hurt, to end this and start all over again and to _stop._

Stop this.

Whatever this is.

Whatever they are.

And he’s slamming his lips into frozen ones- rough and unforgiving, lets his mind discard the remnants of the control he had left, the part of him that still cared.

And now-

-now he’s lost everything.

 

 

~~

 

 

For a second every meaning he had left in his life ends- just like that. And Dean holds on.

‘Cause if he lets go, then it’s all over. Every meaning, every reason, everything.

For a second he can’t feel anything but a burn; right now all he feels is a red, hot fire.

Through the dull ache of his sub-consciousness, he can feel tender fingers tangle in his hair and pull him closer, can feel the hard body underneath him mold into his own like it’s trying to become one and then there’s the moist lips against his, swallowing him and curving a little like a tilt of a smile.

And suddenly it’s too much and he’s _burning_.

He pulls back; or he tries to but Sam’s clutching his arm and crushing him down to him and-

This isn’t right.

Something’s wrong.

His vision blurs and spin out of control, all he sees overlaying on black and white, pieces of grey here and there and he spirals his eyes around, his hands clawing at Sam as though he wants to get inside him- like he’s going to drown and sink until he’s stolen every breath out of Sam and he can’t fucking _think_.

He snaps his gaze down in panic and meets a blood stained face of a corpse.

There are no eyes. Only a smoke rising out of the hollow sockets, a smell of burnt paper and molten acid intoxicating him till he realizes he’s on the floor- curled up into himself and Sam’s alone- lying dead on the bed, pieces of his bloodies flesh peeling away from his skin as easy as waterfall.

He feels himself screaming.

But all he hears is his mother crying out for her son amidst a cold flame.


	3. Chapter III

It’s like waking from a nightmare and coming across death in the worst ways imaginable.

Or maybe it’s worse, even worse than that.

Because _Sam_ , Sam’s not there anymore when he opens his eyes to the smell of rotten meat and puke- only his blood on the dead beat mattress and Dean scrambles to claw it away and uncover what’s underneath. Because-

Because he can’t fucking lose his brother again, he just can’t- won’t-

He can’t remember why he’s here, knows this isn’t where he belongs when somewhere the world’s ending for good but right now, his father’s screaming in his head (not her, _God,_ not _her_ ) and Sam’s out of his reach; it’s like a ton of bricks had circled his heart to pull it out and it doesn’t even hurt and what’s the point in living when he doesn’t even know what the hell anymore.

Sam’s gone, and Dean’s lost him.

Sammy is-

“Calm down Winchester. Your lover boy’s just fine, I assure you.”

Dean whips around as fast as his instincts allows, hand already reaching for a gun but finding thin air.

 

 

~~

 

 

“Where’s Sam?”

The growl in his voice shakes, sounds weak and he hates himself a little more for that. The man in front of him sits down on the handle of a small sofa pushed to a side at a corner, running a lazy hand through his short spiked dark hair as his blue eyes pierces through Dean as though it’s looking right into his soul.

He’s dressed in a hoodie and jeans, a casual wear, and seems as tall as Sam and suddenly the seriousness of the situation hits Dean like a boulder. He’s not armed.

“I told you, he’s fine. Worried about you, yes but physically unharmed. The Sam that disappeared? Well both you _and_ Iknow that he wasn’t real, not really. And even if he’d been, this one wasn’t yours. So it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.”

“What the friggin’- who are you?”

“Who do you think? Look around you and take a guess.” That smile on the pale face’s unnerving.

“You-”

“Brought you here? Why yes and quite expectedly I have a purpose for doing that; don’t we all?” The man slants his face to a side, his angular features sharpening as a frown takes over him.

“Well, well, well, isn’t this just delightful.” He sounds irritated and exasperated. “You thought of this as your hell.”

Dean recoils before he’s shooting up from the bed and to the other side, tensed and ready, waiting. The man smirks but doesn’t make any move to get up, folding his legs instead and cupping his hands over his knee.

“What are you?” He whispers, glare head on and fingertips twitching with the need to be close to a trigger.

The man raises a perfectly curved brow and rolls his eyes, the smirk still playing on his lips. Dean watches him cautiously, noting every motion and shift and planning every possible route for attack.

“Oh c’mon, shouldn’t we be past these unfamiliarity by now? After your marvelous encounter with dear old Zachariah, I thought you’d be rather used to us.”

“You’re an angel?”

“Well-”

“But oh no, no, no- you’re not _just_ an angel, you’re Zachariah’s pal too? Great, this is awesome, I fuckin’ knew he had something to do with this. So what now, he knows how sick I’m of his face so he send you to coddle me? Is that it or is it something else? ‘Cause I meant it when I said he was a dick and I’m never licking his shoes clean. If you’re so good at being his bitch, why doesn’t he just make _you_ do what he wants by the leash he’s apparently got on you-”

“Stop right there Winchester or the end, for you, will come much earlier than fate has planned my friend.”

“Ha! Like I give a damn- you sadistic bastards- fuckin’ stalkers is what you are- _where’s Sam_?!?!?”

The blue eyes narrow to slits, oddly penetrating, almost curious. “He’s with your uncle of whatever sort, currently working on waking you up.”

“I’m sleeping? This is a dream?” He deflates and blinks at the guy in honest confusion. The guy- he still hasn’t got an identity- snorts humorlessly.

“No.” He answers, abrupt and sudden. “You’re dying.”

 

 

~~

 

 

He doesn’t know how long it’s been. Maybe he should care but he can’t feel the need to know. He eases himself to a better position on the floor, seated with the side of the bed digging into his back and his knees drawn up; he’s never felt so vulnerable before.

The guy’s talking but he can barely catch the words.

“As you obviously don’t remember or who knows, maybe you do- you were shot right after your beloved brother…though I’m pretty sure things are more tense between you two now instead of what my imagination is showing me. Anyhow, you amazingly dumb headed idiot - you didn’t even noticed how far you were from alright; oh no- you were too busy feeling sorry for yourself about not being someone who’s enough for your brother to love. So when you collapsed fifty miles after walking up from the dead, excuse me for not bothering with annoying details, you almost got you _and_ your brother killed. Of-course the rest, as they would say, is history but something tells me you’re smart enough to put the left over two and two together.”

He talks like he’s sharing notes on the weather but Dean doesn’t look at him. He gapes at the white plane wall as he half listens and half thinks it through. He’s dying. And right when then end’s so freaking near.

How damn ironic is that?

“-can’t die.”

“Sorry, what was that now?” The man questions with genuine humor pouring from his tone and Dean shoots his deadliest scowl, face drawn back and guarded in offense.

“There’s no way- no fuckin’ way in hell that I’m gonna die. Not now! _Especially_ not now.”

The guy laughs. Brisk and light. And Dean can’t help but tighten his glare at him. “What’s so funny?”

“You are. Haven’t you noticed, Dean?”

“Noticed what?”

“I’m not a reaper. Yet, I’m here and no one else is.”

“You-”

The man smiles, a strange glint blinking in his eyes. “My name is Chamuel. I’ve been waiting for this moment for quite some time now Dean Winchester.”

 

 

~~

 

 

When Dean wakes, he’s wound up tight in familiar arms that feel like they never want to let go. And somehow that makes things better then waking up dead, no matter how uplifting the idea may seem.

He blinks, sees the white cracks between rough wall tiles and then Bobby’s concern from somewhere at the doorway of the bedroom that almost looks familiar to the small guest room he’s known from early mental recollections where Dad’s stuck in a hunt and Sam’s getting on his nerve.

“Dean.” Sam’s voice radiates his relief close to his ears and for a minute there, he forgets; he forgets all about hell and Ruby and the fucking apocalypse, nothing there but the comfort and ease of the skin melting into his and he leans into it like its home.

And maybe it was once upon a broken road when everything was rickety but simple; not screwed so bad that their brains don’t cooperate like it doesn’t at all these days, begging for salvation and a holiday from the fucking mess they’d made themselves into.

And why’s he even thinking about this?

“Dean.” Sam’s sighing over and over and over again and maybe that’s a sob he hears next amidst the choking breathes that leaves him but he’s not sure; it’s not like Sam to lose himself in a moment like this, in fact Dean’s pretty damn sure he’d be happy to get rid of a brother hung up on controlling him or repressing him or whatever the hell it is that Sam believes him to be doing.

And just like that it’s over.

He pulls away, nods once at him without any eye contact and then looks over Sam’s face (what’s the use, he know what he’ll find there) to flash Bobby a grim smile the just doesn’t have any meaning or reason in it. “Hey, Bobby. You good?”

Bobby watches him carefully, a hint of something melancholic in his eyes, a forced quirk on his lips. “You were the one trying to copy Napoleon sleepin’ at the drop of a hat, ya idjit.”

Dean smiles wider, lets the hollow eat away. “I bet, I’m starving. Enough to try out any kind of vegie without having to PMS about it if you get what I’m trying to say here.”

“Good to know, Caesar’s the best thing I got in the fridge right now and you better be freakin’ grateful I’m gonna order some goddamn pizza  after that. ‘Cause you’ll be owing me for months to come.”

Dean grins for real this time. “Make that a Grasshopper and I’ll owe you for life, Bobby.”

 

 

~~

 

 

This Sam’s hunched down with the weight of his guilt and the falling world on his shoulders, twisted into something Dean doesn’t even recognize anymore and it’s bitter- brittle and cruel how he looks deader than he’d ever been, not when he’d been shot, not even in Cold Oak.

Yet it’s justified and right and insanely undebatable because this is exactly what he’d been expecting out of _that_ Sam, wanting him hurting and curling into a shell and never coming out. This one does it a way that makes him feel a anger so raw it hurts to even give it some of the space in his head.

Bobby’s gone grocery shopping, wanting to have lasagna for dinner and now here they are, stuck together like always but without anything to say to the other for the first time in ages.

Sam’s always there, Dean can sense him though he never bothers to look; he doesn’t want to see any of it anymore- all that hurt and guilt and need for redemption. But Sam’s there. Every second, everywhere and it feels suffocating and nauseously overwrought as they twist around each other, trying to keep an eye out for the other without having to see.

This dance is all new for both of them and it’s something so unfamiliar, so alien, that the whole house burns in an inexplicably eerie silence because of it.

They don’t share a word till Bobby gets back in the afternoon.

 

 

~~

 

 

“Where’s Sam?”

Dean stares at Bobby, chewing on the end of his grilled cheese sandwich and waiting for a response. Bobby’s dining room hasn’t changed, rusty and old but not beaten down with the years. Everything he owns always happen to be in good shape; it’s like Bobby renews the whole place annually or something,

There’s no Dad or a chubby Sam nosing a book- sure, and time’s definitely done enough to steal some of its brightest moments but it’s the same as he remembers it. And for now, it’s enough.

“Says he ain’t hungry. Slacked off an hour ago in the guest room.” Comes the gruff reply and Dean frowns, halting and putting the remnants of the bread strips down as he watches Bobby note whatever he’s watching on T.V over Dean’s shoulder with hints of exasperation and a blatant nonchalance that he’d grown used to. Age does that, he’d decided with his brother a long time ago.

“You said he hadn’t moved from my side since I collapsed, I take it he didn’t follow his diet routine either when he was playing the worried wife by the bedside. You put something in him at least right? Water, saline, _opium_ , anything?”

“Do I look like a housewife to you? Do you really think the boy would’ve let me force feed him, I don’t think so. He’s only going to expect that kinda mother-henning from the one person he’d seen do it all his life and that’s you. But with what’s been going on lately, I doubt he’d even let you a foot near him with a spoon. Pretty darn sure he’d prefer a fork instead to stab himself with.”

“Hilarious, Bobby.” The word are dry and dead on his tongue and he looks down, picks up the bread slices and munches on them absentmindedly; the taste is all wrong now, more like burning ash and red dirt that he’d bitten through in so many hunts that had gone awry, gone way out of his grasp till it’s Sam doing the rescue and saving him.

“You plannin’ to check up on him anytime soon?” Bobby sounds wary- reserved and impatient as he watches Dean serve himself another pound of lasagna.

“Nah. I’m good. By the way this is awesome, Bobby. You would’ve made one hell of a housewife, you know that?”  

“Keep your mouth stuffed or I think I’ll end up wiping it off your face, ya hear me?”

Dean snickers, thumbing at the wedges of cheese stuck at the corner of his lips.

 

 

~~

 

 

The back of his hand bangs pretty hard but Sam never answers from the other side of the door. Dean grumbles, hollers and jams his shoulder against the hinge once or twice, calling it a fair warning; Sam’s either asleep or zoned out, ‘cause he never lets that pass without a comeback.

Then again, things have been different with them lately.

He stands outside, a plate of Bobby’s lasagna in one hand and a fist in the other. It’s dark in the hallway, Bobby’s watching the BBC news downstairs and there’s nothing else he can hear outside save for a distant howl.

“Sam. Don’t be a bitch, open the door.”

He waits a beat.

“Now.”

He gets nothing. It takes half an hour for Sam’s plate finds a place in the oven which Bobby keeps switched off just in case Sam doesn’t feel like eating at all for the rest of the night and Dean takes a stroll outside, ending up dragging a rundown Volkswagen under a lamppost to take a better look at its wounds.

There’s a bad feeling inside him, it’s almost like the hollow pain that’s always been there after Dad’s death. Almost.

 

 

~~

 

 

Sam appears in the middle of the night with a bloodstained hand wrapped in a strip of cheap cloth and smelling a lot like whiskey and a little like cigars. Dean takes one look at him and shoulders past him to see if baby’s safe and sound.

Of-course Sam didn’t even touch her.

Bobby gets a good look at Sam and sits them both down on the living room couch to patch him up with the radio on and some beer to get them through this with the help of some buzz for the hours they’d have to waste.

Dean doesn’t ask questions, simply looks out the window into the night as Bobby shoots one inquiry after another, piecing the whole thing together till it all makes sense. Dean blocks most of it all, hears only the excuses; ‘cause that’s all Sam brings back with him when he’s out there keeping secrets.

Sam went out through the window because he didn’t want to bother them, thought he’d be back within an hour or so, just wanted to see if the rumors that sounded a lot like a rugaru at the outskirts of the town were true or not and had to get a prostitute alone at the back of a bar to hear the whole story.

Somehow it was nothing but a usual case of a jealous, over-possessive boyfriend and cults hanging out in the back alley and that’s where the blood had come from. And the whiskey. And the slight stench of tobacco. Dean’s tired by the time it ends and staggers away without a word or a glance at his brother.

He feels Bobby’s eyes on his back as he does, not Sam’s.

When he slams the plate of lasagna on the coffee table after a while, Sam jumps. It’s when he’s dragging himself away and up the stairs does he realize he’d grabbed the dish straight from inside the oven without heating it.

Nonetheless, the next morning at the dining table Bobby says Sam ate the whole thing in one go last night.

 

 

~~

 

 

The world’s still ending, chaos and fire storms raging on every channel of Bobby’s T.V but they walk past it after Sam’s done with his bowl of cinnamon toast crunch. They both get a short hug and a pat on the back from the older man before they set off for the hunt they’d found that morning.

Sam checks the newspaper clippings and scours the internet while Dean drives; they have the windows rolled down, wind’s crashing in and none of them bothering to look at the other.

Dean remembers this, knows this from where he’d been for a day inside his head and tries to let it go, just forgets. Sam keeps quiet, doesn’t even glance at him.

It’s not right, they’re not right. Things have changed and this is a whole new dimension for them. Something in Dean tells him this is how everything’s going to be from now on. Another part of him thinks this just made it a lot easier to wait for the end to come rolling down on them.

Sam lulls a little after some time, slides aside till his head’s almost on Dean’s shoulder. Dean tenses, his hands squeeze the wheel but Sam hums under his breath and moves back to rest his head on the back of his seat as soon as he blinks back into reality.

He’s out in minutes.

 

 

~~

 

 

They make it back into the motel in one piece but renovated in fresh pairs of bruises and swollen joints, Dean still aching from the fall he had to suffer because of the poltergeist and Sam limping a little with his twisted ankle.

They don’t talk, Sam tends to his brother’s injuries and then his own; Dean showers first and then hits the sack as Sam gets in after him.

He doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night. When Sam comes out, pale in the starless night and worn out without a doubt considering the shape he’s in, he stops in the dark to look over at Dean. Dean’s eyes close immediately.

He thinks he hears a small _sorry_ from his brother; it’s too weak- almost a sob- to be Sam.

 

 

~~

 

 

This Sam doesn’t fight anymore, something Dean’s still not used to by now and it’s poking at his insides in a funny way. And he’s not warming up to this new feeling, not even a little.

Sam had always been the one with witty comebacks, sometimes on his side and sometimes against him. Either way, it’s been a trait of his brother he’d admired all his life, the way he could offend and defend in the best possible ways. In eighth grade, when Sam brought home the first prize from some random debate competition, Dean had treated him with a trip to the nearest steak house.

That had also been the first time Sam had hugged him since hitting puberty.

Now, blaming Sam in everything he does just to quench the itch inside feels kind of good but every time having Sam hunch into himself and take it all without a sound makes it go away just as fast like a fused switch, leaving the rest of him- whatever’s left anyway since nowadays it feels like he’s only alive because of his functioning heart- eerily dug open like a victim’s grave.

These days, they’d go through weeks without looking at the other and even in cramped, eroded motel rooms Dean would move around all the time because being stuck in complete silence with Sam felt pressurizing and invading somehow, like he’s being forced out of his own personal space.

They’d become strangers pushed together like repulsing magnetic poles, and Dean’s so sick of the way things are between them that he finds himself constantly wondering who’d leave the other first to save them both.

He thought it’d be him after Ruby and everything else but now it feels like Sam’s always been the one who’s best at leaving between them after all.

 

 

~~

 

 

The impala jerks when he kicks at the brake, and Sam hits the glove box.

It’s a little after sunset- the sky a dark hue of darkening blue- and when he steps outside, it’s vaguely cold. He knows Sam’s watching him from his window, can feel familiar eyes boring into his back but he walks around the car to lean on the hood without looking back. He can hear crickets from somewhere far away, a low buzz that seems out of place in the middle of this empty road but not unwelcoming.

“Dean?”

He smiles, a wry strain on his face that he soon forfeits. “Yeah?”

The sarcasm is lifeless.

The sound of a car door closing breaks the whoosh of vacant air flying by his ears and he looks up, sees the absence of stars, bows his head back down and sees the worn scratches at the head of his boots. Sam steps up beside him, Dean keeps quiet.

“Want me to drive?”

“ _Dean, you’ve been driving for twelve hours man. Want me to take over?”_

Dean swallows, trying to break the lump in his throat. “I’m not tired.”

Sam hums under his breath, keeps glancing at him but Dean never tries to catch or see what they are. Sam can be as freaked out as he wants to be, he started all these and now he has to deal with it.

“You want a beer- or something, maybe?” Sam says it and sounds like the words are forbidden, as if he’s not even supposed to speak at all; and _damn it, he should be guilty_ \- he should be- but Dean can’t stand this side effect of breaking Lucifer free, of breaking Dean’s trust in him. Sam speaks like someone else, he speaks like he’s killing someone.

Maybe he knows he’s killing Dean.

“Okay.” He hears it before he knows his own answer and that’s weird. Perhaps he’s as influenced by this whole ordeal as Sam is, it’s just that he has absolutely no idea if that’s a bad thing.

“Okay.” Dean’s not sure if Sam’s asking him or just repeating his words but he nods anyway, confirms it because there should at least be a drop of normalcy between them. They shouldn’t lose themselves in this nightmare, not when there’s still a job to do.

Sam exhales loudly, a white fog warping with the breath he lets out. “Okay.”

This time he says it with warmth, a warmth Dean hadn’t heard from him in a while. A warmth with life, gratitude- hope. Hope, Sam said it with hope. Sam said it like the Sam he used to know.

Sam moves and Dean’s hand jolts a little at his side as though he wants to catch Sam’s wrist and bring him back. Dean frowns, fists it instead.

The echo of the trunk opening, a soft rustling, multiple clanking and then then the trunk closing again pounds in his ears. And Dean likes it, the sounds being solid proofs of his baby’s existence. _His_ car, which he’s never going to lose, even if it wants to leave him. The only thing that still makes sense to him in this stupid mess that he’d got himself into with Sam.

“Here” Sam holds out a bottle, his face almost timid with uncertainty but with a weird light behind it. Sam doesn’t look dead anymore and it heals a small bullet hole in Dean, a hole he’d shot into himself a countless times these past few months.

He hates the change. Sort of.

“Thanks.”

They don’t talk after that, and it’s strange how it doesn’t feel strange but Dean doesn’t mind. It’s the first time the quiet following them around has no intent behind it and Dean’s not even fidgeting, so that’s something. Sam’s taking small sips, Dean’s taking swigs one after another with only a quarter of a minute between each and it’s like before.

Before-

The bottle sinks from his hold and clatters at his feet.

He watches it break into two, plain liquid slushing out, wet splotches lining up into confusing map-borderlines and his lungs can’t hold the air in anymore.

Sam’s suddenly there, clutching his arms, light shakes of his grip dislocating his vision and he’s saying something but Dean can’t find his way back to hear them.

He backs away, pushes Sam off and falls back against the front of the car, cool metal and familiar arcs touching his back reassuringly. From the corner of his eyes, he can see Sam hesitating and maybe that’s hurt on his face, maybe Dean just put it there or maybe it’s something else. Dean doesn’t want to care anymore.

He stays still, breathes in and breathes out till he has a rhythm, feels the shifts and turns and motions he’d always ignored in his brain for reasons even he can’t decipher. Sam chokes for a second or two, holds back whatever it is he wants to say and Dean knows he’s worried. Dean just wants to forget about that, make sure it never matters to him again.

Isn’t that supposed to be easy after all they’ve been through?

Sam steps back first, lengthens the distance between them and disappears out of his peripheral vision. He comes back with another bottle and when Dean does nothing but stare at it, Sam lets it rest on the hood beside him.

Dean eyes the beer, wonders if he should, wonders where it all went wrong and then tells the sky to go to hell for being so blank tonight. Sam’s kicking at the broken glass pieces when he looks up, rolling them to the side of the freeway, and Dean glances away just as fast as he’d raised his head.

So he settles for silence, jerks the cap open and downs it one go as fast as he can bring himself to without some serious brain damage. A minute drags on and a train whistles somewhere at the back of his mind, it seems familiar but too far away. After what feels like forty years of torturing souls in hell, he relents and looks back at Sam.

“Think we should give it a go again?” His voice is rough, cracked, even when he keeps it low. Sam’s kneeled down at the edge, pushing at the broken glass over the grassy sideline and when Dean speaks, he looks up immediately. The hollow’s back in his eyes, all the lights switched off and the hints of sunrays long gone.

“The whole doing your own thing, I mean, like before. Y’know.” Maybe he’s drunk. He feels drunk. He sounds drunk too. “I mean, this is not working, not really, Sam. I mean-”

“I know what you mean.” It’s a whisper. It might as well have been a scream.

“Sam-”

“I don’t get it. What do you want, Dean?” Sam’s voice quivers, he’s trying to repress it, but he’s angry and Dean knows that for sure because he knows Sam. And Dean’s too far away from any kind of sense, and if this leads to a fight, he’s going to be sporting bruises in the morning when he’s going through his hangover. And he doesn’t want that because it means too much work.

Dean likes to work, but only when it includes beat down engines, bloodthirsty monsters, frisky girls and Sam.

He isn’t so sure about the last one anymore.

“Huh?” It comes out sounding like ‘ _whatever_ ’and he braces himself for a punch. If he’d let someone use that tone with him, that someone would be plastered to the ER by now.

Sam doesn’t hit him.

When Dean summons up whatever courage ha’s got left, enough to look his brother in the eye, he finds a face he hadn’t seen since his mother’s death.

Sam looks just like that little boy in the mirror who used to look back at him from grimy motel bathrooms with his Dad falling apart at the seams right next door and a six month old Sam wailing right outside.

Sam reminds him of a corpse under Dean’s hands in hell.

Only- maybe even more eradicable.

It takes him a moment to realize that Sam’s speaking.

“- can’t even look at me anymore, you call me a monster, not your brother, not your family and then you cut me out for good. And just when I’m starting to actually accept it, accept what I’ve done, accept what I _am,_ you call and give me another chance. And now- now you go and tell me to get lost again? I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do with that.”

Dean winces. Sam sounds like someone’s just choked him. “You think I do?”

Sam laughs, a dark note of ruthlessness. “You sure act like you do, Dean. Aren’t we supposed to be past all these childishness? What’re we doing dancing around each other like nutcases? We don’t even know what’s going on and move around on hunts like it still matters- and it does, sure, but the world’s still ending Dean. And it’s on me, no one else, not you, not the angels. And I just- I can’t keep doing this.”

“So?” Dean’s tired, drunk and dead on his feet. He’s not sure how he’s going to keep doing this without Sam but for some reason a part of him wants his brother gone. He’s not sure about that either. These days anger’s become a constant inside him.

Sam scoffs, disbelief marring with a broken helplessness in his expression, clear as daylight. “So?!?”

Dean nods, just a lurching motion of the head. “So.”

Sam laughs. “So I’m asking the last thing I’d ever ask from you Dean, what do you want me to do? If you want me to go away, I will. If you want me to stay just so you can keep an eye on me and keep me from losing control, I won’t say a word. I will.”

He stares. Sam’s panting, his eyes stingy and red but not flashing like they’re supposed to (like they used to), he’s crouched forward in a way that’s almost primal, he looks-

-wrecked, ripped open, left bare, hanging by cut cords only to be torn apart again. So Dean stares, sees the endlessness to that hollow he’d dug, feels its infinite coldness. And stares.

Sam’s face spasms once, and Dean thinks he’s going to break or cry or maybe even scream but then he backs away, one step at a time.

He eyes Dean for a long minute, keeps stepping back- slowly, like he doesn’t want to, like he’s not sure for once-before he finally turns to walk away, hands shoved inside his pockets and shoulders bent low.

It’s too slow and Dean can pull him back without wasting an effort, just reach out and tug, but something got his feet stuck to the ground. It should’ve been guilt, it could’ve been denial but it felt inexplicably close to fear. And Dean doesn’t want go there, has no idea why he needs to even think about it. So he just-

He stares.

 

 

~~

 

 

He drives back by himself, locks himself in a motel room and falls to darkness in a chaotic haze. He never thinks of Sam or how wrong everything’s gone the past few hours or how far they are from each other because somehow he’d grown used to it, used to the feeling of Sam being away from him and used to the nonchalance that doesn’t give a damn if he’s hurt as long as he can find his way back.

When he wakes in the morning, it takes just a couple of blinks to fight the strong sunlight and the nausea eating away at him and focus on what Sam’s doing at the corner of the room beside Dean’s open duffle.

The daylight’s intense and he knows it’s late in the morning. The room smells stale, a little like blood, a little like tart drugs in hospitals, and a little like both. It intensifies his need to hurl but he stays in his place, cautious, motionless.

Sam hisses then, after a couple of ticks from Dean’s watch by the bed, and Dean closes his eyes.

Even then, even with his brain cutting off his senses and his thoughts a fuzz of vacuum, he can see Sam stitching back his pierced skin and tying them together by bloodied threads with razor sharp edges cutting at bared flesh.

He’s out of bed and kneeling in front of the toilet in seconds. He tells himself it’s the hangover he hadn’t been dreading last night but a voice- tuned too low but clear enough- in his mind keeps saying that it’s something else and Dean’s not so sure if he buys that or not.

 

 

~~

 

 

Somewhere in some town in Iowa, Dean gives up. Cass is MIA, probably chained up upstairs by his so-called-brothers and sisters, Bobby’s busy with his hunter buddies and Sam’s not with him anymore.

At least not his brother, because the Sam that’s sticks to his side feels more empty than him these days and having to see him every day is the same as not seeing him at all.

Dean’s in a bar, a random place with backdoor alleys that he slid into without checking it out from outside, when he gets it- actually gets it- and he laughs so hard over shots of tequila and vodka and rum (and some coke maybe, he’s not counting by the peak of the night) that he doesn’t even bother with the dude who shoulders past him messily, probably itching for a fight.

His bartender- a lovely lady who looks good enough to eat in her low cut top- keeps giving him these amused stares and quirked half smiles and he barely catches them, too caught up with the knowledge that there’s nothing left of himself and laughing his ass off.

For the past few weeks, they’d gone by without a hunt in their hands and left to rot in moth eaten motel beds with nothing but daytime television for company.

Plus Sam’s always finding ways to go out and sneak back in with fresh bruises; Dean’s always thinking of ways to catch him off guard and question him till he’s pliant but he’s quiet the whole time they’re together and Sam doesn’t even look at him anymore.

So giving up feels pretty good, so good in fact that he hauls his drunk ass all the way over to the motel as soon as he knows that he can still move, not even letting his bartender help him to his feet when he stumbles, not even noticing the open willingness in her eyes.

Tonight’s all about getting his point across. He’ll make sure of that.

 

 

~~

 

 

Their room’s reeking of blood again when he trips in, but it’s lacking any sight of Sam. The bathroom door’s left ajar and Dean can hear the water running from there. He frowns, doesn’t know why he feels like it, but it fits in the picture glued in his head. He walks over silently, treading carefully all the way, and then pushes the bathroom door farther open.

Sam’s on the floor, by the sink, curled up into himself and breathing hard. Dean can see his arm cradled close to his chest, and the last remnants of his functioning mind knows that Sam’s hurt. Sam’s hurt bad.

“Wenn’ onna hunt- again?” He slurs and the shock in Sam’s eyes burn through him when his head snaps up at Dean, it makes him feel victorious, and sort of giddy, and it’s a soothing touch to the scorch left behind from the alcohol.

“Dean? I thought-”

“Yeah, yeah, me too. Bu’ fate doesn’ give a fuck abou’ tha’ Sammy.” He sounds funny, so he laughs. Sam’s face falls and the wariness disappears, replaced with the vague grimness that Dean’s always seeing nowadays.

“You sound like you’re gonna drop dead any minute now, Dean. Seriously? You were out the whole day yesterday and I still don’t know how you made it back without the impala. I get it that you don’t want my help, I do, but the least you can do is take care of yo-”

Dean cuts him off again. “No.”

“What?”

“Don’ leave.”

“…”

He tries to be as serious as Sam, pulls all his features in tighter, forces a crease on his forehead. Sam’s looking up at him from the dingy tiles with a strung up tension that just- that shouldn’t be there at all.

They both know what he’s talking about.

“Dean, you’re drunk. Just give me a minute, I’ll get the aspirins from your bag. Stay here.” Sam’s voice is patient but Dean’s anything but. He grits his teeth, fists his hands and suddenly wants a fight right the heck now.

He charges when Sam makes a move to get up, gets a fistful of Sam’s plaid shirt and brings him down, not noticing the blood or the cuts or the tattered patches of the fabric sticking out. Sam gasps and it makes the whole triumph thing going on in his head worse, not that he’s complaining. He’s going to be the one talking this time, and Sam’s gonna have to listen whether he likes it or not.

“Don’ leave, okay? ‘cuz-” He blends the words together, hoping they make sense, because he doesn’t know what he’s saying.

He’s not sure what the next line in his script was but he’s going to keep saying whatever comes to his mind, because that’s the way it should be and he feels like it.

Because-

Because they’ve been here before, Sam had been beneath him and Dean’s held him down and all of this feels so damn familiar. Haunting, eerie, a flashback leaving no stone unturned and yet not sparing a single clue to begin with.

“-cuz I remembe’.” He whispers.

Sam’s eyes meet his, and he’s stagnant under Dean’s hands. And this has happened before, Dean’s felt this before, can remember the feel of a motionless Sam. Dean keeps him pinned, clutches at his shoulders, presses him back on the floor and watches silently. Sam waits ( _like that Sam hadn’t_ ) and then speaks slowly, cautiously ( _like_ he _hadn’t, he’d never said a word)_.

“Remember what?”

“Wha’ he said.” He grins, a daft lightheadedness overwhelming him. “I remembe’-’ve been tryin’ not to, but I do. I do- all of it.”

There’s a dark aura that comes over Sam then and Dean doesn’t like it, not one bit. “Dean, let me up. You’re not making any sense-”

“He said- he said-” He tracks his thoughts, finds all the memories blurred and feels his face constrict. He can remember, but it’s wrong. And he’d been such a mess afterwards, shoving it all away and deep, deep down to the part of himself he keeps buried with all the other truths he can’t survive with.

So he leaves it at that, closes his eyes. He pulls at the memory, sees what’s been missing, what he’d been trying to expel from his brain. What he’d convinced himself wasn’t true. 

“Sam.”

His voice cracks, and it sounds wrong, almost like a child lost in a sandstorm, almost a whimper of a wounded animal without a mother. Dean’s nothing like that.

He’s drunk. And so, _so_ , very tired.

So he leans down, swoops in closer to Sam and breathes in the same air as him for a second, rests as his eyes close, his head still spinning with what he’d seen in his head. Sam becomes an ice cold stone beneath him, unresponsive, lifeless, alien to his touch but still infuriatingly familiar.

“Dean.”

Dean lets the words go, shows him instead, steals away the last inch between them. His dry lips find the patch of skin of Sam’s neck, exposed to naked air, just a little shy of his frayed collar and inhales. He laughs a dark, toneless note, and it comes out as a scoff, too rough, too thick; it echoes through him like the crackle of fireworks, and he knows Sam catches his name in it no matter how well Dean masks it.

Sam shivers, a slight motion that he mirrors. Dean finds himself pressing closer, he yanks Sam further to him, shapes them together and keeps holding his brother like he’s hanging from the edge of an abyss. Because he remembers, and he’d never wanted to and now he knows why.

The world’s the hunter.

And they-

-or maybe this. This right here-

This is the monster.

 


	4. Chapter IV

Dean remembers the little dent on the wall across from him, remembers himself seeking ants in it with his eyes as he listened to his mother play the piano downstairs. They’d be at their neighbor’s, and he’d have to spend time with the quirky nerdish red head upstairs in her _tea room_ and look after Sam at the same time.

He hadn’t had any problem with Sam, Sam used to love being asleep all the time, but it was the red head that irked him. She used to only let him out of her sight when they’d play hide and seek.

So he’d stay at the top of the stairs, letting her roam about the basement and the kitchen cupboards looking for him, and listen to his mother laugh; to him it was as beautiful as the melodies she preferred to play for Mrs. Carter.

And to this day, it’s the most important memory of her, the most precious.

Watching Sam now, watching him watch Dean back with eyes so blank feels like the weight of a dead, stone cold world.

And he’s got no idea how long it’s been, but at some point someone inside him that sounds a lot like a four year old kid keeps yearning like a hungry heart for love- wanting, demanding, and needing to see Sam laugh for him; for him, _him_ , and only him like he’d claim every single one of hers as his.

He’s supposed to say something, probably knows it deep down, and maybe he could if this had been any other day. But the way his throat’s closing up and feeling like a traffic of lumps makes him want to black out and never come back.

This feels like the end. Even more than the apocalypse hanging over their heads like some pendulum, even more than how he’d been the last few- what- _decades_?

When Sam pushes him, he can’t remember why they’re there on the bathroom floor and why everything smells like blood and rust and stingy ointments. It’s a little later, when his vision clears enough to understand what’s going on, that he wrenches himself away and tumbles into the wall.

Before he knows how to move, or how the world’s spinning around him, he loses the ground from beneath him. He falls. He doesn’t hit anything, keeps his balance and stays upright because suddenly there’s a hand- familiar, firm, meaning more than words right now- that grab him and steer him into directions he can’t see.

And Dean lets him, because this means something. Sam’s-

Sam’s always meant something.

The last thing he knows isn’t something that belongs to Sam; it’s not the comfort of the bed that accepts him or the blissful splash of water hitting his tongue or even the flashes of her that come alive suddenly in fragments, like forgotten dreams.

It’s his head leaning to the hand on his forehead and his body automatically finding solace under the fingers carding through his hair.

Sam’s so much like Dad.

It’s always been like that.

But Dean can see her in him. He has always seen her in him.

 

 

~~

 

 

His consciousness goes in and out, like it’s blinking, and he has no control over himself. Each time his lids give way to the shadows of the room they’d rented, he searches for Sam and finds nothing. It lasts for a short moment, the panic, the deflation, the loss; then he’s asleep again.

The third time he wakes, he knows Sam’s there. He can’t see anything other than the foot of the bed and spider webs somewhere on the ceiling but he knows Sam’s in the room with him. He doesn’t move, feels the presence he’d known all his life and drifts off again.

The fourth time he’s awake, he can make out Sam’s back from across the room. Dean nudges his arm, tries to move it from his side but it’s too much work and the numbness wearing him down isn’t all that bad.

Sam’s stagnant; quiet and indistinct. His laptop’s on the table before him but it’s closed, he has his hands locked on his knees and he’s not doing anything. Dean can’t see his face, it’s too low for him to catch anything.

His heart clenches.

And he loses his hold on reality.

 

Sam’s right there.

The next time he’s up he’s alert, faking sleep and Sam’s _right there_.

He doesn’t dare move, he _can’t_ move.

They stay like that for the rest of the night. And Dean does stay this time, stays and hears Sam breathe quietly and hangs on to this. It could’ve been a dream, and in the haze that he was, he would’ve passed this on as one but when Sam says his name in a low shaky whisper like he’s broken and lost and helpless- it’s too fucking real to be anything else.

God, they can’t-

They need help.

 

 

~~

 

 

“You have a fever.”

It’s been hours and his bed’s itchy.

Sam’s not looking at him, and his words hit Dean like a storm out of control, bland, emotionless. For what feels like the first time, it seems like nothing of Sam left in the person sitting on the other bed with a book in his lap. Dean watches him from the doorway, a foot almost ready to kick the door open and make a run for it.

He’s got his jacket on, his hair lying wild and feral.

“What of it?”

Sam snorts, and it makes something die inside him. It’s strange; because he’d been so convinced that there’s nothing left alive in him to do that anymore.

He waits a moment, and when nothing comes he walks out. The door closes like a fallen feather behind him. Something tells him he did the right thing because he’s no drama queen slamming doors and stomping off; something else tells him he was giving Sam a chance to stop him.

 

 

~~

 

 

His head hits the brick wall, and then it’s all bright lights and white, circles and blackening , wherever he looks.

There’s a girl- has to be a real babe- on her knees for him and all he can think about is the distance between him and Sam that’s been mocking him since Lucifer snuck out.

It’s growing, he sees it grow every day, and the helplessness he’s left with makes him want to throw up every damn time he wakes up to another morning.

A tongue caresses the underside of his cock, and he jolts. His back slams against the wall, loud, booming, and when he looks down she’s staring up at him with a twinkle in her eye. She seems proud, and _man_ , she’s got a right to be.

A moan goes off somewhere and as it reverberates in his pounding head he recognizes himself in it.

-or he doesn’t, because he sounds like some fucking male prostitute. The thought makes heat crawl up his face, makes him want to push her off and just let this sink in. But then she’s sucking and gagging and he’s gone.

He doesn’t come though.

Later, when he’s retching dry air out of him under a rain of cold shower, knowing Sam can’t hear him because he’s busy being messed up and curling in on himself and trying to stop himself from falling apart in their room, he’d try to remember why he didn’t come as soon as she used up all her tricks on him.

He’d think, because he’s always been the best at forgetting something that’s needed to be forgotten, and he’d distract himself with memories of the hot chick who blew him in the trashy bathroom of some random night club.

His vision’s almost entirely white, his body vibrating, and before he knows what he’d doing he’s got her hair in his fist. He’s moving, his brain’s too busy being shut down to let him know what’s happening but he’s suddenly alive with a pulsating energy that feels dangerous in his veins.

He can feel himself throwing her against the wall, can feel the cold bite of Ruby’s knife in his hand and watches as it slithers close to her throat. Sees the fear on her, smells it on her, gets drunk on it. He’s somewhere deep down when it happens. He can’t tell reality from a dream anymore.

“Christo.”

Her eyes don’t turn black, he hears no malice or threat or scorn. He hears screams instead; hers. Maybe that’s what makes him let her go, maybe that’s what makes the gears in his head start working again and maybe that’s why he doesn’t remember what happened when he ran from there.

Bu he runs, he runs like it’s a hunt and he runs till he can’t breathe and he runs, runs, runs till her screaming goes down in his head.

He falls on red dirt, on his knees, out of breath in some place full of shadows where he’s hidden by tall dead trees. He can’t feel himself shaking, and he knows he’s not. But something in him is so darn shaken up, that a thousand million punches to the earth and breaking the skin of his knuckles just as many times don’t even hurt anymore.

A need to yell builds up, but the pressure feels prefect inside. He wants to let it build up some more, and there could be a way to let it out without risking it someday. But for now, he feels it inflate and just goes with it.

 

 

~~

 

 

He doesn’t care how he got here; not really. It must’ve been an hour or so but it feels like days, and somehow he’s standing on his own in the middle of the street, away from baby, screeching bloody murder at the top of his lungs. The sky stays dark and quiet, never wavers, not even once.

He yells, screams, shouts out loud till his throat burns like acid and his breaths come out heavy and wheezing.

“Calm down. You’re too full of yourself, it’d be good for your health if you get stood up once or twice.” The voice rings like a dream in his head, and he knows that he know it but he hasn’t heard it before; at least not in reality.

“You fucking bastard!” Dean grabs for Chamuel, but the angel disappears.

“Frankly speaking, I have much more important things to take care of than to listen to your sob story, buying Cheerios and Cadbury for example. But I’m here. And that’s that. So let’s skip the foreplay and get right to it, mm? What do you want, Winchester?” He appears again, behind Dean, casually inspecting his nails as he talks.

“What the fuck did you do to me?” Dean’s still panting hard. All he can see is red, a thick blotchy shade that makes him think of blood and hell.

The angel has the nerve to look confused, and he gets a quirked eyebrow as an answer. “You look fine to me, in fact- you look very fine to me, not that I want to add to your jam-packed ego or anything. Maybe we should go out sometimes, catch a movie-”

A hand shoots out and suddenly Chamuel’s inches away from Dean’s glare. He looks down his nose at the hunter, disdain clear on his face. “Must we be aggressive?”

“Listen to me, you son of a bitch, if you think you can throw me around like some spineless ragdoll like your precious Zachariah then you’ve got another thing coming for you. Don’t mess with me, you hear? ‘cause if I find you bumping your nose in my business one more time, I won’t be responsible for what I do to you.”

“My, my, you sure live up to your reputation, don’t you Dean Winchester?” Chamuel’s smiling. “But don’t you worry your pretty little head, I’ve played out my part of the story. Whatever happens to you from now on, it’s all you.”

Something that feels a lot like fear seep into his bones and maybe it shows on his face because Chamuel’s smile turns into a grin, a sight so feral and dangerous it makes him shove the angel away. His heart keeps pounding away in his ears.

“Leave.” It’s too small; and he sounds like someone else, he feels like someone else.

“Are you sure, don’t you want to know what’s going to happen to you? All the things you’re going to do, all the destruction and violations and ruptures and _fire-_ ”

“Leave!”

Chamuel’s smile is still there, still there-

“No.”

 

 

~~

 

 

It’s like some messed up déjà vu.

It’s more than that, it’s too much, and he can’t stand understand most of what’s happening. He’d done this before, and it’d been too out of his control for his liking. And now it’s happening again. Again, like some tape recorder playing on repeat.

It’s not real, it can’t be, but it makes his chest lurch with no air.

Dean hears, knows what the words mean, he knows that the angel’s toying with him; but the truth hurts.

Sam’s had it. Dean’s lost himself.

Sam’s not Sam anymore.

They’re not them anymore.

But they’re together.

And it’s this, their clinginess, their codependency as the angel puts it, their attachment and obsessiveness and psychosis when it comes to each other- now darkened and wrenched out of balance and just as flawed- that’s the reason for their undoing.

But-

They are family.

“Forget, Dean. That’s always the optimum option. Let fate show you the way. You’ll be able to finally breathe, Sam will be free of his thirst for redemption, and don’t you want to start over again? Don’t you-”

He moves, sees the endlessness of pure hot red and his fingertips graze ghost white skin as it fades to nothing.

A heartbeat later he’s alone.

 

 

~~

 

 

Cas doesn’t come, not at first.

Dean gives up midway, the next string of curses forgotten when his world spins on its axis and sinks so low that nothing comes out anymore and he’s left a piteous, helpless, begging mess.

A hand on his shoulder makes him turn around. Blue eyes filled with hesitancy and caution look back at him, and Dean can see the walls drawn against him. They hold strong, promise no defeat and it makes him want to hit the angel.

Cas confirms it, Dean doesn’t even have to ask.

He hadn’t seen him for so long. The angel had just vanished after they’d made it back from heaven, and maybe he’d been let down by the big revelation about god, maybe he just didn’t know which way to go- now that there was no hope for him; or maybe, maybe he found out something that’d stopped him from seeing them.

Maybe he’d known all along.

There’d been so many questions, burning to be asked, but they ebb to oblivion now. That face right there, the sympathy, the apology, masked and locked away and guarded but still there- that’s his limit.

Cas doesn’t even have to say a word, Dean just knows he knows.

And he knows it’s true.

He must’ve blinked somewhere in between because somehow he gets from fighting the angel out of his way to stumbling like a mad man through the street back to his car.

It’s wrong, it’s all wrong, he’d never wanted this.

Not this, never this.

 

 

~~

 

 

“Dean, listen to reason.” Cas is there on the passenger seat suddenly.

He accelerates the impala, drives on and a thought at the back of his mind tells him to slow down but he’d drowned too far inside this haze to care. His hands hurt from where they grip the steering wheel, and his body is on fire.

He doesn’t answer anyone, there’s no need to. He feels oddly calm, face stoic and demeanor blasé. The tranquility makes it okay, but it’s so erroneous that it’s laughable. He’s not even sure where he’s going, how he’s even up when his brain’s shut him out but Sam’s a constant in his mind and rage is pouring into his system like a drug stuck in acid rain.

It’s blur outside the windows.

“What are you going to do to Sam?”

“…”

“Dean.”

“Zip it, Castiel.” His voice cuts the air, a slap on the face, a sharp flash of a nightmare. “Either you do that or scram, ‘cause I don’t think I can stand to be around an angel any longer, even if it’s you. By the way, weren’t you the one who ditched my ass just when I needed you the most?”

“I’m sorry, Dean, I am. But this is about Sam.”

“Get the hell away from me.”

“I can explain better than my brother did, you have to listen to me. He told the truth, yes, but it’s not what you think.”

“Get. Away.”

“Dean, Sam is-”

He yanks a hand up and ends up slamming it on the wheel, hard. A part of him, a monstrous, hideous part that’s always been there since hell tugs at his control, smug, satisfied, hungry.

“Now.”

One word. It takes that one word for Cas’s eyes to widen an inch and his face twisting into a slideshow of emotions, ones he’s not used to seeing on the angel’s face.

When Cas disappears, he’s back in a cold, aloof, world that has no meaning in its existence; a world where he’s a hunter- nothing more, nothing less. Where there’s no future and dreams and friends. There’s no family, no Sam.

The rage and the pain come back, full force, dominant. He relents.

 

 

~~

 

 

Sam’s on the bed farthest from the door. He’s looking out of the window, turned away from Dean, when he slams the door shut behind him.

The sound echoes and then quiets into nothing. Dean can’t hear himself breathe, can’t hear Sam, and it has his ears ringing loud.

He shoots to action, moving with purpose across the room, over to his bags. He grabs whatever’s familiar to him, holds on to each one of his belonging like they’re trying to slip right through his fingers as he packs.

Sam doesn’t move.

It’s when he’s got everything crowded together and his mother’s smiling face is the last one to go in (it’s hard to let go, it’s always like that) that Sam finally speaks up, voice clear and edgy.

Dean fails to catch the words at first, and Sam doesn’t repeat them. But after a beat, they sink in, one by one, seeping in and flooding his thoughts with a brokenness both open and fraught and it’s _all_ _his fault, it’s Sam fault._

The photo ends up crumpled in his fist as he turns to his brother. Sam’s staring back at him, eyes red rimmed, face pale and indistinct. He might- _fuck, fuck, fuck-_ he might be seeing Sam for the last time.

He can’t move and the photo scratches his palm like it cares.

His silence settles it in the end and Sam laughs, dark, choking. “You _are_ leaving. Why, what did I do this time? Talk too much, talk too less? Or were you bothered by the fact that I was trying to eat or sleep or maybe spend a day like setting Lucifer free wasn’t- _isn’t_ \- my fault? Which one is it this time, Dean?”

Sam sits up on his knees on the edge of the bed, and Dean can see the slight pink of his cheeks, how his face is slowly gaining a dim flush. It makes his eyes shine too bright, topaz and jade and toffee and something in between. Sweet, sharp, alive.

And maybe they’d light up too if Sam laughed, maybe tonight he _would_ laugh, just like she used to, like they all used to long before Sam came into the picture. Now they’re gone, he’s alone, and Sam’s the only one left.

_If you can’t save him, you’ve gotta kill him._

His hand knocks against cold glass and a bottle of Jack crashes to the floor. He watches the empty space on the table where it’d been, wants to bury himself in it till he’s nothing. He can’t even bring himself to look his brother in the eye; it’s all Sam’s fault, it’s all his fault, then why-

-why the hell is it so hard to cope with this, where’s all this weight is coming from? It’d be so easy to let go and hand it over to Sam. He’d move on, go his own way, let it all end once and for all. Sam would be the one who’d have to deal with this then, get himself all warped up and twisted in dark, dark secrets once again.

Only this time he won’t be in it by his own choice, won’t be in it with his head intact.

Dean’s sure of that.

Who knew god was a sick bastard?

“We gotta talk, Sam.” And it sounds like they’re breaking up. He doesn’t laugh though, not even in his own head. Instead he digs his nails into one bloody palm and waits, watching Sam shrink back, watching Sam finally give in.

This is it then.

It’s too fast, too soon. But this is it.

 

 

~~

 

 

Each word comes out like some maelstrom.

Dean relives everything in memories and flashes as he spills his guts and lays himself out there, bare, open. Sam doesn’t cut in, doesn’t even look at him, eyes somewhere close to the floor, just a statue on the bed.

He talks nonstop for what feels like hours, talks about how he’d been sucked in deep inside his own head when Sam had thought he’d collapsed right after they got back from upstairs.

Their younger selves, their dead father. The numbness he’d left behind for them. Their unfeeling little world, the monsters, the pitying hunters.

Then the angel comes in, fills up most of his dialogues- thrown in before Dean can find the guts to tell him what happened before it- and Sam finally looks up. Dean stills his eyes on the old worn down television set, and keeps blocking Sam out of his peripheral vision as he continues.

He tells Sam how the angel had been waiting for him, how he’d made everything vanish and then said he was a friend. He tells Sam everything he can, and leaves out parts he can’t, fights the storm brewing inside as he tumbles over words.

He stops where it gets out of hand, knows he’s at the brink of losing it, and whispers the final thing Chamuel had told him back then. This makes up for everything he’d deliberately skipped, and if Sam gets it, then-

-this is it. They’re done.

“What does that even mean?”

Sam’s voice is cracked like it was him talking all this time. He sounds angry; wrecked.

Dean shrugs in response. “Don’ know.”

“Don’t you?” The words are scathing, twisted with brokenness. Low, untrusting, rough.

Dean finally meets his eyes.

They’re flying with tumultuous feelings that Dean had never wanted to find on Sam. There’s hurt somewhere in there, and it cuts something deep, drives this whole fucked up mess home and Dean’s never wanted to get away so bad.

Sam’s breathing hard, glaring right at him.

Dean’s motionless.

And the world’s spinning like it can’t give a damn.

“Don’t you, Dean?”

 

 

~~

 

 

He goes to speak, words at the end of his throat, wrapped tight around his tongue but Sam’s off the bed before he can. Eyes ablaze, wounded everywhere, a clockwork gone wrong, Sam stalks forward.

Dean falls back on the bed when the first punch comes and Sam’s on him in seconds. He’s talking, blabbering nonsense as he shoots blow after blow, red eyes and white face and a vulnerability Dean hadn’t seen since eons ago when he’d had to tell his five year old kid brother that they’re moving.

“Sam.”

Sam’s elbow hits him under his chin, and he bowls over to the side, groaning. Sam takes the advantage to get a fistful of his jacket and pin him to the bed.

“I’ve been trying so damn hard Dean. But every single time I try to do something right for once you act like I’m some kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

Dean cusses, thrashes his hands around to catch Sam’s but gets shoved back against the mattress. Sam’s glowering with the rage and pain and need that hadn’t been there before a bagful of demon blood stole his brother.

“Sam.” He growls out in warning but Sam’s growling louder; they’re beasts all on a sudden, fighting to dominate, to win, to keep. They’re alone now, more than ever before, even as they are together. And it’s not right in so many levels that Dean can’t even begin to understand how they got here.

“Are you going to tell me to get over it, Dean? Do you know what it was like? To wake up every morning knowing that somewhere out there someone’s burning because of me, someone’s crying because of me, someone’s killing themselves because of me- do you have any-

-sometimes. Sometimes I forget to breathe and when I remember I feel like I deserve it, nothing’s ever felt more right; when we’re hunting, I want the monsters to win because they’re practically saints next to me, and sometimes I just wish that when you’d try to shoot them, you’d get me instead, I _dream_ of it.

And they’re what’s getting me through, believe it or not, because I don’t think I have anything left.  Besides, y’know, demon blood. And maybe memories of drinking it, getting drunk on it.

You’re disappointed, and mad, and hurt, and I’m sorry. But we both know you could never hate me more than I do. I told you- _I told you to- but you lied._

You should’ve listened to Dad, you should’ve gone with your instincts. You promised you would, and I wanted you to so bad. But you didn’t. You’re a coward.

-you were scared, so you couldn’t, I get it. But I’m- now I have to live with- you’re worse than him, you’re worse than Dad.”

Dean gets a knee up and Sam shouts out loud, sinking into the bed piteously, clutching himself tight. Dean grips his arm, pulls him back and ropes one hand around maddeningly flailing wrists. Sam yells out loud, face red, eyes wet.

He rolls them over so Dean’s on his back and Dean imprisons his wrists in one hand, the other grasping at the loose strands of Sam’s hair and yanking painfully hard. Sam’s nail scratches away wildly at any exposed skin they can catch and Dean bites down on Sam’s shoulder.

“You don’t know, you have no idea-” Dean gets out through clenched teeth, hands whipping away fast out of Sam’s reach as they roll over again, still struggling.

“I know.” Sam cries into his ear, and jostles him down. Dean seizes him by his nape and pushes the down again. Sam’s hands come up, fists and hard knuckles, hits him constantly until the red Dean’s been seeing dries away and he sees fresh tear tracks beneath him.

“What?”

Sam goes wild, flaying limbs everywhere, mouth letting out words in screams. It takes a minute for Dean to understand what he’s saying and when he does, his grip on his brother tightens.

“I know, I know.” Sam’s repeating the words again and again, and Dean watches him silently. Sam’s still fighting but Dean can’t even feel it anymore. Every push and strike and swing are weak, Sam’s not even trying. Dean grabs both of his arms, lets him struggle violently like it’s a fight to the death and shoves him away.

They stay like that, a feet apart and breathless, eyes locked in a haze of hot, slicing pain.

They reach for the other at the same time.

Dean’s been having so many déjà vu-s lately.

But this is real.

They are real.                  

 

 

~~

 

 

They don’t sleep that night.

When Dean slips into the bathroom naked and locks it, he doesn’t look back at the shaking silhouette he’d left behind on the bed tangled in shaded sheets. Instead he lets his muscles relax under a cool spray behind a plain woody door and shuts the reality out till the colors go and he’s left with a numb blackness.

The next day, the sun’s up high and they check out early into the morning without having breakfast. Sam drinks coffee in a to-go cup, and listens to every one of Dad’s favorite songs without complaint. They leave the windows down and the wind crashes in with mercy, feather light on their skin but a rush nonetheless.

They stop by a diner, and Sam buys their lunch. They eat on the side of the street, Dean atop the hood and Sam in the backseat with a novel he’d bought a week back.

He flips through it fleetingly after they get back on the road. Soon enough he’s asleep with his head on the back of his seat, the book left open in his lap. Dean drives another hour or two before he finds them a motel to spend the night.

The sun sets outside.

They get two rooms.

 

 

~~

 

 

Cas hasn’t come to him. Dean’s not surprised though, he hadn’t prayed.

Sam asks about the angel now and then, and leaves the conversation there. Everything they talk about nowadays always end in heavy silence or an abrupt pause. It’s not awkward, neither uncomfortable nor fake.

It’s not unreal either, as funny as that seems.

But it’s not right; a taboo, a crime, a sin.

But in the end it’s worth it. It’s not like they were good before. They’d already been sinking low in dark water for a while, this was just another mouthful of salty sand.

 

 

~~

 

 

Chamuel’s waiting for him in his dream.

Dean had thought he’d be strangling the angel the next time he sees him but oddly enough he feels calm. They’re in a borderless field, and it’s nothing but blue skies and grasslands everywhere.

“What do you want me to do this time?” He asks, mocking, bringing his knees up as he sits down. “Knock Sam up?”

Chamuel laughs, it sounds genuine enough. “That would be amusing. But no. I’m here to talk about how stupid you are, you and your brother.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere.”

“It just might; after all, you’re stupid enough to fall for supernatural tricks.”

That shuts him up. And even though Dean’s not looking at him, he can clearly see the triumph, the arrogance on the angel. He grabs a small blade of grass, twirls it in between his index and thumb.

“You never told me about your weekly appointments with Sam.”

There’s a sigh, impatient, frustrated. “That wasn’t me.”

“The hell it-”

“It wasn’t. Your- _brother_ \- has his own cheeky ways of playing spy.”

A harsh scoff, so much like laughter, leaves Dean and the feeling’s alien to him. Suddenly up’s down, left and right don’t make sense anymore and everything’s topsy-turvy from the get go.

“What are you doing here?”

“What’s with the sour mood, Winchester? One night’s not enough?”

“...”

“If so, guess today, or whatever this is, is your lucky day.”

“How ‘bout you stop beating round the bush and just get to it?”

Chamuel keeps quiet, and his eyes burn into Dean with an intensity that has goosebumps rising up on his arms. It’s a bad feeling, enough to start up an itching to run.

“You failed, not that I’m surprised really. The apocalypse is still on apparently.”

Dean’s blood cools down.

“That’s not-”

“Uh-huh. ’Fraid so. It’s sad, really. I know it was a tough decision, and a big sacrifice for both of you, but it just needed a little more punch, just a little more-”

Dean laughs, frenzy and voids and ruins. “What, heart- honesty- _lust_?”

Silence comes up again.

“What do you sons of bitches expect? Newsflash pal, we’re brothers, flesh and blood and all that shit- you familiar with that?”

“Can you tell me the most crucial trait of an angel of the Lord, Dean?”

Dean glares in answer.

“We can’t force you, in any sense; not without your full consent.”

 

 

~~

 

 

When Sam gets back from jogging at half fast six, the swags in Dean’s room aren’t there. He finds the door unlocked when he runs upstairs, and Dean’s on his bed watching T.V by the time he slides in.

He stands back and waits for some reason but Dean’s too busy frowning at the news, forehead creased and face rock hard; it’s so easy to feel his own rage and hate seep out of him and his heart jumps to his mouth, drying up in milliseconds when he senses Sam catch up to the hefty atmosphere.

“Dean, what’s going on?”

Dean freezes, a quick glance around giving him a prefect view of the disaster the room had become, drapes ripped open, furniture scarred, a havoc from top to bottom. He notices Sam’s gaze- cautious at first but then softened with relief- sweep to the uneven yellowish rough cloth enfolded around the hand he’d cut that night on broken glass. It’s still there, probably over a healed wound by now, but still serving as a strong reminder.

“The world’s still walking the plank.”

He turns the volume up, catches Sam slumping down on the edge of a coffee table from the corner of his eyes. They hear the news lady in silence as she prattles about the fires and tsunamis and earthquakes; when the screams for help get too much, Dean switches it off and tosses the remote away.

It hits the wall beside the window. Sam flinches.

Dean doesn’t get a reply in the end, not in the next twenty four hours or the ones that follow.

Sam doesn’t say anything.

Then again, Sam never says anything these days.

 

 

~~

 

 

They don’t touch anymore.

Dean’s not sure who initiated it, but it’s somehow become a routine between them, a wall of some impenetrable sort. Sam walks a hand away from him, he keeps them at arm’s length, and there’s no brushing shoulders or slapping arms or playful punches anymore. Whenever Dean looks around and sees the chatty passersby laughing and sunny, but the euphoria goes numb with one look at _their_ reflection in dirty motel lobby mirrors.

Sometimes, Dean cares enough to think of a conversation or two, or even pay close attention to every detail Sam seeks out in his research on hunts. Sometimes, he cracks a joke and waits for Sam to laugh, sometimes he waits for the reproach just as badly.

Sometimes they feel really dead.

Sometimes he doubts that they’re even alive.

Sometimes going to sleep and never waking up feels like a good dream.

 

 

~~

 

 

When Sam says his name now, it’s blunt and blasé and it makes his skin itch like hell. Like his blood boiling up and getting ready for a fight, like a stranger taking over and giving orders, like Dad leaving him alone for days for his _own good_.

Now they can’t even look at each other right thanks to those winged douchebags.

Dean wants to kill them, bring ‘em back in the most painful way, and kill them again. And he wants to make Sam watch, make him see what hell had made him into, what he’d turned into for a brother who didn’t even bother to look at him when he went to picnics with a demon behind his back.

The betrayal’s still there, the rawness between them nothing more than a buzz now, but it’s still there. After everything, he can’t believe why that’d even matter anymore, but it does and they’re not okay and he’s-

“Dean.”

There it is again, that voice saying his name out like it’s taboo. Sam’s in his room; he’s got the door open, his backpack slung over one shoulder and a frown on his face. He doesn’t say anything else.

“Right.” He clasps twitchy fingers tight around the strap of the duffel in his hand and walks out of the room first. He feels Sam’s gaze on him the entire time until they’ve got everything ready and they’re off with baby eating up empty miles.

Sam goes tense then, like he’d just realized something. When Dean sneaks a look at him somewhere in the middle of the night the same day when they’re still on the road, Sam seems hell bent on focusing on anything but his brother.

Sam doesn’t talk to him for a week.

 

 

~~

 

It’s a cold Tuesday when they break.

It’s been raining for four months straight in some beat up place at the outskirt of Leroy, Texas, and they’d been holed up there for more than three days. They’re still in the dark about this thing.

The water pressure in his room sucked so bad that he’d kind of wanted to hug Sam when he told Dean to use his. He’d been expecting a straight out no, didn’t even know why he bothered to ask until he got the thumbs up.

Sam’s been up most nights trying to find something, eyes baggy with lack of sleep and too much caffeine, skin sickly pale.  He’s the same, stuck in front of his laptop like glue, when Dean gets out of the shower with a towel on his head.

He’s searching for a clean shirt when hears a thud behind him.

He turns to find Sam on the floor, unconscious.

 

 

~~

 

 

The rain’s a constant outside.

Sam wakes up after Dean finishes wasting two gallons of water on his face. He gasps first, a sharp intake of air that leaves him dizzy before he recognizes Dean.

He stares for a long minute, holds Dean’s eyes like he’s trying to find something.

It’s sudden, when he cries out something that sounds a lot like a mix-up of Spanish and Enochian, scrambling away and clawing at the floor like he’s facing the monster under his bed. Dean’s left speechless.

It doesn’t take anything to calm Sam down, he goes quiet and breathless as soon as he’s balled up at a corner away from Dean with a hand still raised to keep him at bay. He spends a long time like that, making sure Dean’s keeping his distance and there’s no possible danger.

“Sorry.” He says after a while, back to being himself. “Sorry, I just- sorry.”

“What the hell was that?”

“Nothing.”

“What the hell was that, Sam?”

Sam glares hard at him, Dean glares right back.

“You know what it was.”

“Yeah, what I don’t know is why we’re doing this _now_!” Dean’s shouting before he can catch himself and he can see Sam’s shoulder lift up like he’s getting ready for a brawl with Dad again.

“What was I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know- how ‘bout how you can’t stand the sight of me, maybe throw in something like how you’re sick of me or disgusted by me-”

“Jesus Dean, it’s not you.”

“Oh no, of-course not.” Sarcasm drips from each word, cold, livid, as he strides over to Sam. Sam watches him warily, unmoving against the wall, still curled into himself.

“When has it ever been my fault, right Sam? That why you can’t look at me, can’t even bear to be in the same room with me? You think what- I’ll rape you? Wait, no, no, no, the way _you_ see things, it’ll be you raping me.”

“God Dean, shut up. Just shut up. I’m not- I can’t do this right now.”

Dean laughs. “You want us to wait till you’re in the mood little brother?”

It doesn’t make sense. It’s like everything, every inch of the anger and the betrayal, the hurt, the pain, Ruby- it’s all suddenly coming alive in his blood, in his veins, ready to explode and overflow.

The intensity of it all has him reeling, knocked out of breath and into something darker.

Sam’s looking at him strangely, a little like he’s begging, a little like he wants nothing but to get away.

“I never- I’m not blaming you, Dean.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“I’m trying to make this right. We’re both really screwed up here, Dean. How long do you think we’re going to survive like this? This- this- _thing_ \- that we’ve got going- this silent treatments and distance, it’s doing more harm than good. I know you still don’t trust me-don’t try to twist it into something else, just don’t- I deserve it Dean. I deserved it. Look at us, we’re so out of it and-

I’m so sorry-”

“ _I_ fucked _you_!” Dean’s scream bounces off the motel walls.

Hazel eyes snap up, meets his. There’s a temporary drag of silence where the rain echoes in their heads like thunderclaps. Sam looks away first.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean it was your fault.” Sam whispers, more to himself than Dean. “We both know who’s responsible for this.”

“Stop that.”

Sam looks up again, giving him a questioning frown. “What?”

“You’re doing it again, shutting me out. Stop it.”

“Dean-”

“No, you know what? You don’t get to do that. All you ever do now is think about what to say, and then say it, and then think some more and it drives me fucking insane. It’s like you’re trying to be someone else and that’s- I’d never, I _never_ wanted that Sam, I don’t even know if whatever crap that you spew these days is even you talking or the friggin’ encyclopedia radioing you or vice-versa or I don’t even fucking know!”

Sam goes to speak, or maybe even end the conversation- it wasn’t really going anywhere anyway- but Dean’s faster. Dean’s always been faster; he’d never had the choice not to be.

He’s on his knees in front of his with Sam in his arms in a flash, and it feels weird doing this without a shirt on, especially after- but Sam’s not squirming, he’s not even trying to pull back, he’s just sitting there and letting it happen and Dean’s never felt so grateful- brokenly so but still he can’t help but think that it’s enough for now.

They need to find their way back.

And they’re gonna be together when they do.

 

 

~~

_You know, the truth is, even at Stanford, deep down, I never really fit in._

_Well, that’s ‘cause you’re a freak._

_Yeah, thanks._

_Well, I’m a freak, too. I’m right there with ya, all the way._

_Yeah, I know you are._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part I ends here. Part II's not finished yet but that's probably my fault. I don't even know where I'm taking this; this was started back when I was watching s5 but now it's suddenly season 9! and I'm still not done with this. I'm so sick of tired of this that even thinking about this makes me want to turn back time (if only I could.)

**Author's Note:**

> Not my best work. I'm actually pretty disappointed with this. I wrote this when I was going through my first writer's block and I didn't even have a decent plot in mind. I stretched it out so long that it became two parts. I'm just going to post the first part and if you want more I might think about posting the second half even though I'm stuck in the middle of it.
> 
> *Sigh* I don't even know where to take this. I'm so lost when it comes to this that I'm kinda surprised I haven't deleted it yet.


End file.
